Two researchers with the Indian Institute of Science have developed tiny tweezers that can manipulate objects in fluids as small as an individual bacterium. In their paper published in the journal Science Robotics, Souvik ...

A new evaporation dynamics study finds that very small droplets evaporate more slowly than predicted by current models. Researchers from the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IPC PAS) in Warsaw, ...

As consumers around the world have become increasingly dependent on electronics, the transistor, a semiconductor component central to the operation of these devices, has become a critical subject of scientific research. Over ...

Modern rockets and their launch vehicles commonly rely on hydrogen-oxygen mixtures as propellant, but this combination is highly explosive. The Challenger space shuttle catastrophe of 1986 is associated with self-ignition ...

Few of us pay attention to the minutiae of coffee stains' deposition patterns. However, physicists have previously explained the increased deposition of ground coffee particles near the edge of an evaporating droplet of liquid. ...

In a new animation of moisture transport in the atmosphere of moisture transport in the atmosphere, you can watch last year's precipitation fall over land and sea. See tropical cyclones develop and unfold. The animation is ...

Dartmouth scientists have shown for the first time how winds blowing across lakes affect the chemical makeup of water vapor above and evaporated from lakes, which may aid research into past and present water cycles under ...

The process of evaporation, one of the most widespread on our planet, takes place differently than we once thought - this has been shown by new computer simulations carried out at the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the ...

Evaporation

Evaporation is a type of vaporization of a liquid that occurs only on the surface of a liquid. The other type of vaporization is boiling, which, instead, occurs on the entire mass of the liquid.

On average, the molecules in a glass of water do not have enough heat energy to escape from the liquid. With sufficient heat, the liquid would turn into vapor quickly (see boiling point). When the molecules collide, they transfer energy to each other in varying degrees, based on how they collide. Sometimes the transfer is so one-sided for a molecule near the surface that it ends up with enough energy to 'escape' (evaporate).

Liquids that do not evaporate visibly at a given temperature in a given gas (e.g., cooking oil at room temperature) have molecules that do not tend to transfer energy to each other in a pattern sufficient to frequently give a molecule the heat energy necessary to turn into vapor. However, these liquids are evaporating. It is just that the process is much slower and thus significantly less visible.

Evaporation is an essential part of the water cycle. Solar energy drives evaporation of water from oceans, lakes, moisture in the soil, and other sources of water. In hydrology, evaporation and transpiration (which involves evaporation within plant stomata) are collectively termed evapotranspiration. Evaporation of water occurs when the surface of the liquid is exposed, allowing molecules to escape and form water vapor, this vapor can then rise up and form clouds.